Sciatica, or radicular leg pain, is suffered by millions of Americans. One common cause of sciatica is ruptured or herniated discs of the spine for example, in the lumbar area. That is, when the outer wall of an intervertebral disc (i.e., the annulus fibrosis) becomes weakened, it may tear allowing the soft inner part of the disc (i.e., the nucleus pulposus) to push its way out. Once the nucleus pulposus extends out past the regular margin of the annulus fibrosis, the nucleus pulposus can press against very sensitive nerve tissue in the spine resulting in radicular pain. One treatment for relieving radiculopathy is a discectomy. A discectomy is a surgical procedure performed to remove at least a part of the damaged disc to relieve the pressure on the nerve tissue and alleviate the pain. The surgery generally involves a small incision in the skin over the spine, removal of some ligament and bone material to access the disc and the removal of some of the disc material, e.g., removing herniated nucleus pulposus to achieve neural decompression. Currently, standard discectomy techniques do not repair the defect or incision in the annulus fibrosis. As a result, the remaining nucleus pulposus may extend or push its way out of the opening or damaged annulus fibrosis post-operatively. Alternatively the surgeon may elect to perform extensive debulking, in which most of the remaining nucleus material is removed in addition to the herniated portion to minimize the risk of post-operative reherniation, but this increases the risk of post-operative disc height collapse and subsequent progression to increased lower back pain.
Thus there remains a need to provide a tissue repair system and method and more specifically an annulus fibrosis repair system and method to solve the challenges present in current discectomy procedures and the post-operative complications associated therewith.